[OpenID] W3C TAG recommends against XRI

[Nat Sakimura]

I think Drummond will post a note on this, which is more authoritative
than mine, but I will post mine in the mean time.

Their concerns, I think, are as follows:

1) xri: is not registered at IANA
2) xri resolution requires at least two round trip. One to get XRDS, and
    another to get the real resource. This is a waiste, and should be
done in single trip.
3) We should reuse the existing scheme and http: should suffice instead of xri:

My response would be:

> 1) xri: is not registered at IANA

It was determined during the discussion with OASIS officials that it
would be more appropreate to register xri: after the completion of xri
2.0 spec suite, i.e., after the vote, so that we will not pollute the
space with something incomplete.

> 2) xri resolution requires at least two round trip. One to get XRDS, and
>     another to get the real resource. This is a waiste, and should be done in single trip.

I guess OpenID folks are well aware of the advantage of this architecture.
It is a service selection.
TAG seem to suggest that the service selection should be done through
accept header in HTTP, but as noted below, XRI is intendead to be used
outside HTTP world as well, where, accpet headers are non existent.

> 3) We should reuse the existing scheme and http: should suffice instead of xri:

>From the beginning of the TC, the use cases not over HTTP nor TCP/IP
were discussed.
HTTP based flow is just a binding. It probably would be inappropreate
to use http:
scheme for those "exotic" cases. xri: is supposed to be an abstract schema
which will be cast onto specific protocol schema given a context.
OK. We could use http: as an abstract schema as well, but then, for
most people,
it will not be clear if it is an abstract one or concrete one by looking at it.
So, introducing a new scheme would make less confusion.

Also, there were some consideration on the multilingualization as well.

=nat

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Dick Hardt <dick at sxip.com> wrote:
> Drummond, would be interested to hear your comments on this topic.
>
> -- Dick
>
> On 22-May-08, at 2:07 PM, Andy Powell wrote:
>
>> In a message to the W3C Technical Architecture Group list yesterday
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2008May/0078.html
>>
>> Tim Berners-Lee and Stuart Williams, co-chairs of the TAG state
>> categorically, "We are not satisfied that XRIs provide functionality
>> not
>> readily available from http: URIs.  Accordingly the TAG recommends
>> against taking the XRI specifications forward, or supporting the use
>> of
>> XRIs as identifiers in other specifications".
>>
>> Is there a view here about whether this has any impact on the current
>> adoption of XRI in the OpenID 2.0 spec?
>>
>> Andy
>> --
>> Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation
>> http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/
>> http://efoundations.typepad.com/
>> andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk
>> +44 (0)1225 474319
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://openid.net/mailman/listinfo/general
>>
>>
>
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-- 
Nat Sakimura (=nat)
http://www.sakimura.org/en/